Illarion.org

It seems that when someone enters or leaves illarion it no longer states :

............... has left illarion
............... has arrived in illarion

is there a reason for this?

Well, you never know who is actually on. I somehow like that.

the reason is that this "feature" was quite anoying to most people... and of course it was kind of a bug, since you could see names of players you never even met...
it's disabled with the new server release... and propably will stay like that...

How will we know when our friends come on? I guss I will just have to shout for them every 5 minutes or so . . .

Yes it is quite a good thing that they took it out. It was very annoying and didn't really help roleplaying. In medieval times you didn't know who was around or when. Only by their daily bases and the such of people they knew.

Greetings !

When you walk in RL through your hometown, are you always sure you will meet your friends there ? Is there a nice, warm and friendly voice in your head that says "Friend Xyz just arrived at the towncenter/Mall/whatever"? No.

I completly agree with everybody who thinks such a feature should never come back.
By the way, if you want to know if you friends are realy on, keep an eye in the homepage, the online status tells you who is on.

Bye bye and have fun
Loki

Ok This is BS!


I cannot stand this! I cant see when my friends log in. If this stays this way then I plan on not playing anymore. And how is it that the message is annoying? I will be more annoying running up and down the streets shouting various names to see if my friends are even on! This is the most ridiculous thing that I have ever seen happen. Please, dont do this. You must return it. Believe me, I know of many very angry people right now because of what has happened and I dont think that there was any point to removing it. Sure, it does not help with Roleplaying...but if you cant find your friends then there isnt much point either. ...This is taking a turn for the worst.

Loki: I dont think anyone has any intention of logging off every 5 minutes just to see if their friends are off. Chances are they will just stop playing altogether. This game isnt exactly meant to be real life either...its not like they shove you in some virtual reality body suit and say, "Okay, you are going to spend the rest of your life here." Being informed of when your friends are online is the best way to keep the roleplaying to a maximum, as people are more willing and happy to play when they find out, "Hey! My friend is online! I havent seen him for awhile!" This kicks the "roleplay mode" in gear in people's minds, instead of them just constantly mining, or powergaming, or PKing people... I cannot believe anyone would really wish that the "feature" was gone forever... I think this should be re-added.... There are things that should be realistic..and things that shouldnt be. A balance of these things are what is going to make Illarion the best role-playing atmosphere. Keeping the notification in Illarion is one of the things that does not need to be realistic...


A slightly angered,

Aftering listening to cain's message I would have to agree he has a point. What I would prupose to fix this for either people that hated it for it being "annoying" and for it likewise. I say you should have an option to turn it on or off in some kind of option screen. This would fix both complaints on both sides. I hope my idea is taken into consideration. Thanks

I understand that there needs to be realism in this game...and I agree....but there has to be a balance of realism and unrealism in games like this. What's next? Famine? Plagues? Some dictative ruler who hates his people and tortures them or some other weird bs? I cant believe this was even done to begin with to be honest. I just hope you realize your error in this...and yes...I mean error...


You know who....

Alright now I see something is wrong here. Bror by adding Realism to illarion you take the fun out of the game from being a fantasy. Realism like plauge and famine or the other such makes the discouragment of roleplay fall deeply. Look at Graal for an example. It used to be based totally on fantasy and now the makers made it a realistic and it went from 2000-4000 players down to 200! Illarion will do the same and the few good players that are on it will go down to none. Stop this I beg of you. A overwhelming majority of the players think that taking out the name is another step towards realism. Let us keep it fantasy wise. Fantasy is the best way to play a game and that is why I like Illarion. All the roleplaying and fantasy makes it stick out from others. IT is a great game the way it is. I am sure lots of other players agree with me. So take this into consideration before you go into further steps. I will appreciate it greatly if you did so.

Sincerely,
Sevious Helios

Since when did Roleplaying consist of anything more important than PEOPLE? Without knowing if people are around..then there is no point in being on...The population of the game WILL decrease and people WILL stop playing altogether! By removing the name annoucement, you remove the sole true way of finding out if a friend is around....Sure, you can check the site..but people will just check the site every 5 minutes...It will become a horrendous hassle to even bother playing the game and even more people will quit! It is imperative that you restore the system that was around before today...I know Bror...its your game or whatever and we dont really have a say in it...but without us players, you have no game. Sure, there will be other people..but without us older people to help keep the roleplaying system alive.....it will turn into Runescape...a skill-gainer with no purpose besides becoming "da strogest mofo in da game".....Please listen to my words with a completely open mind.

You know who by my ranting....

I have to agree with cain and Helios.......there will be many pissed of people in the game because you cannot tell if your friends are online.


I would just like to say this.....
Way back then, the towns where small like they are in illarion, people would know if other people where awake or not because the town is small there would not be a way not to know if your friends where awake or not.
Hell if you really wanted to make it "realistic" why do you just vanish when you log of hell when you log of you should see someone lieing there on the ground.....that is what sleeping is isn't it.
But with takeing this away you will no defenetly loose many players to the game whos knows you might not have any soon.


So take put it back on and let people continue to play the game....unless you just want a game that has absolutely no players at all or very little players.

Why don't you just do what I do?

Before I go into illarion I go to www.illarion.org and click on the who list. Then I start the game.

Every once in a whilw I alt tab, select the window, hit <ctrl><f5> which reloads the screen and go back.

I actually do that even when there *IS* the So-and-so entered Illarion, becuae i miss the names 90% of the time with the flood of converation and everything else.

Then we have the best of both worlds. People who find the So-and-so entered annoying are happy, and you are happy becuae you can *still* see who is online.

I would understand if we didn't have online players list which Alatar worked hard on getting up.

Serpardum...

You insinuated that I was ungrateful for what you all do for us...You were very VERY wrong. I am very grateful for even the fact that this game exists! I appreciate the fact that you all try so hard to make the game as perfect as possible..for reasons of helping people or for a project...or whatever..the point is that without that notification, to find out if anyone is on you would have to check the site like once every 10 minutes..otherwise someone could log on and log off before you got the opportunity to find them...Having that in game notification is important to knowing when people are on...and things ARE getting too realistic...And it will wind up going on and on...Eventually all of you will decide that Famine and Plagues are good ideas because it brings realism..and dying once means you die permanently..because that is the realism of it...I play this game because it allows me to get away from the realisms of life...Sure, we have dwarves, elves, and lizards and what not...But that is found in almost ALL other fantasy based games...Illarion is the game I stick with because the people are nice and the game does not run off of realistic fantasy...it has (or had) more of an unrealistic sense to it(which is a good thing) when I am able to know when people are online. I am positive I can vouch for virtually everyone that plays this game...Leave it as it is...There is no need to alter things as they are..especially now that we have the e-mail account system coming in...There is no need to change that which we are so accustomed to. I have no intention of apologizing for my previous, expressive wording, as I feel I was in the right for expressing myself...Nor do I have any intention of letting this drop...


You know who by my ranting,

I don't think Bror can hear you right now Sevious, and I don't think he ever really did understood that a poorly planned attempt to increase roleplay can affect people in ways that result in bigger decreases in roleplay.


Anyways, one can't be too one sided in thinking about whether the message made things realistic or not. The usual supporter for its abolishment will of course agrue that in real life you don't see "<name has arrived, etc>", but then in real life you also can go find your friend at their house, and not have to wander the world looking for someone whom you may never find.

Then of course, with the low amount of RP players already, this wll have a good chance of making finding good interaction even tougher now....

I doubt we can change their minds but I shall state my point anyway. Sure you don't get a nice little voice in your head when you friends are around, but you friends don't suddenly stop existing. It'a nice to know when someone is around, because you most likely won't see anyone for more than 1 hour in a day. In real life you can be fairly sure that the person you are looking for exists somewhere unless they have stated otherwise. My point being, that it's helpful to not need to look at the server status every five minutes to see if your friends exist.

yes i believe it may be good in some ways.....but rpg's are good for haveing fun and escaping reality.....because you are playing a character that know nothing about the time now.....if it continues to stay like this without it saying who comes online or not....it is more fantasy which means you dont go into reallity you stay in fantasy.

Makeing it more realistic destroys that fantasy feeling aand when you play the game to escape reality you arn't you are just going from one reality to another....which in my case makes it less fun.

Hallo

the "feature" was for the old days. when you was the only one on the server then it was good to know when someone was joinning or leaving the game.
since a year this "feature" should be removed and now it is.

Bye
Read ya
MfG

Capt. Kirk

Its back

Only because Serpardum had to bring the old server back online temporary.

The message server being had to be brought back was my fault

as soon as the bugs are found and fixed and the new server version is up again it will stay without those messages...

the reason for taking those messages out is not that it's more realistic that way...
it's because it distrubs the gameflow, especially if many people are online and besides it causes additional serverload and bandwidth usage...

maybe you shouldn't just complain that it's taken out... maybe you should find an alternative which is more suited and doesn't disturb the game... (f.e. if you are talking to someone and there are many people loging on/off all the time it's quite anoying... and i doubt you see every name then... or care about them...)
there are other possibilities to reach the things you want...

btw. you don't complain about the monsters finding you now... why don't you think that is a bad idea? it's done mainly because it's more realistic that way... why don't you complain that you can't sit around anymore and laugh about them not finding you?

hmm I always found it to be hard to follow conversations because of it. Especially when quite a few people were leaving/joining it became virtually impossible to talk to anyone...

Theyre probably going to bring back the new server soon.
I like it better without thhem.
If anything they should make a thing (where inventory and stats are tht is a scroll withthe logged on people on it.

The most important things to me on Illarion are my friends, that is why I like Illarion. Perhaps we could all meet half way? Say if there is another taskbar (like the 'show skills' bar) implimented that has a scrolling list of everyone who is currently online, so if you want to roleplay to the max you just dont use it, and if you love knowing when your friends are on, or not (like me) you could use this instead .

Actually, I like this idea. Although it is more difficult to meet certain people you can always do what Serpardum does and how long will it take? Perhaps it will take 30 seconds each time but, at least my conversations will not be drowned out.

Perhaps in trying to bring back a feature that TPTB deemed not good for the game you should come up with ideas that do fit into the game and meet the same needs.

Just some ideas I could come up with that perhaps could meet the needs, which may, or may not be appropriate. I'm not saying any of these neccessarily be put into the game, but perhaps they could be. Discussion would be needed:

Linked rings/stones/amulets/whatever. You make one, take to a friend and link it too him, then stick it in inventory. Whenever a friend comes into the game you have one of these for you see, "Your stone of Cain Freemont glows".

Scrying spell. Cast the spell for "Cain Freemont", if he's not asleep (logged out) you are told so.

Amulet of sight. Same as Scrying spell.

Etc... You should get the idea.

@Kirk: There won't be as much players online anymore especially when the email application kicks in. You think the people will be ready for this now? I think not.

@Shi'voc: I don't think you need to explain again the reason for taking out the message, it's fairy obvious. But do you think this is really so important? Are these messages one of our worse problems now? I don't think you fully understand how this will affect Illarion. The goal for this was to increase the roleplay atmosphere, but you may find that the result may not be as you intended.

Again I have changed my mind. I have seen the cons and pros of this topic and it seems I like the pros more than the cons. I guess these really doesnt have anything to do with a step toward realism. But I hope the game doesn't have any steps that will take it towards realism. The web site is my new guide

Perhpaps the ring/stone/amulet or whatever idea is not such a bad one. But instead of having one ring for each friend why not one that you can link to all your friends that have a similar ring or whatever.

This ring would glow or something to let you know which of your friends had just come on. Perhaps to aid roleplay these rings would allow brief messages to be sent by each friend so they could arrange to meet. For example "Bith's ring of friendship glows with the name of Cain Freemont" hence letting me know Cain has just woken. Then we can send a brief message to each other: me "Cain I will be in the library in 2 minutes if you want to meet" Cain "Sure Bith but make it 5 minutes"

Problem solved and now more messages can be sent. for example
me : "sorry Cain got sidetracked I will be a little longer"
Cain : "it is ok let me know when you are there"